Gant Offers a Fashion Vision for a New Colored America in Vogue Scandinavia

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Gant Offers a Fashion Vision for a New Colored America in Vogue Scandinavia

Gant launched a high-voltage, sponsored fashion story ‘Gant is leading the glorious return of ‘preppy dressing’ in the debut issue of Vogue Scandinavia. The visual fashion mashup is lensed by Marco Van Rijt with styling by Fernando Torres. Talents include Caitlin Tamsyn Soetendal, Fredrik Quiñones, Lamin Holman, Levi Anijs, Idsa Mikado, and Miyake Mugler.

Gant has long done better in Europe than in America. But there is high potential in this reinvention of the New Haven-born, Stockholm-headquartered brand that is redefining prep. Founded in 1949 by Bernard Gantmacher in New Haven, Connecticut — the home of Yale and, arguably, the epicenter of American prep — Gant sits at an intersection of ‘Gossip Girl’ meets Black Lives Matter and Yale meets Howard University.

As America struggles with a full embrace of its own identity as a nation, fashion itself shows us what we can be. We can be colored; we are the world.

“I think prep has made a natural return,” says Gant's Creative Director Christoffer Bastin. He notes that in the early aughts, Ivy League attire was very much a uniform — the club blazer, the chino, the button down — reflected in the skinny Thom Brown suits favored by Pharrell Williams and the cotton candy coloured polos popularized by Kanye West. “Balenciaga and Vetements came in with their streetwear influences and committed this mercy killing on prep,” he says.

Gant’s Autumn/Winter 21 collection and the ways in which it’s interpreted by a fresh, youthful crop of Gant enthusiasts is inspiring. A hoodie may be worn under a tweed coat, for instance, and the chinos are decidedly looser. Cardigans are open and oversized. Patchwork and patches are employed liberally, offering a renegade take on iconic collegiate items.

The key word here is ‘renegade’. In a moment where a majority of America’s young people reject capitalism as we know it, fashion is making a big statement. As summer winds down in COVID-world, fashion is creating a new American style heavily influenced by the reality that global creatives want America to embrace and celebrate our multicultural identity.

Sixteen months after the murder of George Floyd, this new America may not make it. The forces fighting this deep embrace of a colored identity — that we are a nation of mutts with staggering potential — may lose the fight against the forces of white nationalism.

But I am clear that fashion really is taking a stand on multiple fronts. This Gant advertorial for Vogue Scandinavia is truly a roadmap for the better-angels vision of an American future. — and I love it. ~ Anne